Small companies that have seasonal or cyclical business often suffer inefficient operation because shipping carriers do not regularly include those types of businesses on their delivery/pickup routes. These seasonal or cyclical businesses typically have times of the year where some or many packages need to be shipped every day, while at other times of the year, a week may go by when only a few packages, if any, need to be shipped.
As a result, a problem exists in that shipping carriers often find it prohibitively expensive to include all of these businesses on their delivery/pickup routes because the carriers' route drivers spend unnecessary time entering places of business to learn whether or not a package needs to be picked up. As a result, businesses that have seasonal or cyclical business are often excluded from the regular delivery routes even during the busy seasons, causing lost time and inefficiencies by the businesses in scheduling or arranging package pickups.
A problem also exists that even when a business is included on a regular delivery route, but does not have package pick-ups on a regular basis, the shipping carrier still experiences lost time and inefficiencies if the carriers' route driver must spend unnecessary time entering places of business to learn whether or not a package needs to be picked up.
What is needed is a system that alerts a shipping carrier's route driver to packages that must be picked up without the route driver expending resources in entering the place of business to determine whether a package needs to be shipped. What is also needed is a system that alerts route drivers assigned by the carrier to a regular delivery/pickup route that a place of business not on the regular route has a package that must be picked up, without the driver expending resources in leaving the regular route, traveling to the place of business, and then entering the place of business to determine whether a package needs to be shipped.